Dark Lies: Chapter 27

Jaxson

Dawn softened the sky above the tall trees that lined the dirt road. I drove along until I saw my father’s old blue pickup. It was weathered, worn out, and perfectly suited to this place—just like the man.

I’d known where to find him first thing in the morning: his favorite fishing spot. After he’d stepped down as alpha, my parents had turned their backs on the city and all its problems. They lived in the lake lands in central Wisconsin, as far as they could get from anyone else.

I tightened my grip on the wheel. I had to be very careful what I asked. Laurel said Savannah’s parents had fled Magic Side because of him. I wasn’t certain why, but for some reason, I believed the old witch.

I shut off the truck, opened the door, and dropped down from the cab. He’d know I was here by my scent, if not the telltale sound of the engine.

Pushing overgrown branches aside, I followed his smell through the woods.

I hadn’t seen my parents much since my father, Alastair, had stepped down, even though they were only four hours out of Magic Side. I’d come up a few weeks before to tell them about Billy’s death. That hadn’t gone well, and I hadn’t planned on coming back for a long time, but none of us had that luxury anymore.

I stepped to the shore. My father, sporting rubber waders, stood up to his thighs in the glistening water. His back was to me, and he didn’t turn around. “Alpha.”

My neck grew warm, and my muscles tightened. “Father.”

He flicked his pole, making the fly dance across the surface of the dark water. “Don’t scare the fish.”

So I stood there, silent as a ghost. Frustration churned inside my gut, but I kept my composure and scent even. I wouldn’t take the bait, even if the fish did.

Finally, he looked back. “Your mother misses you.”

I crossed my arms. “I know. It must be hard for her to be away from the pack.”

After he’d stepped down, they’d moved north to the lakes. He said that it was to give me space to lead, but I knew it was to get away from the wicked city that took my sister.

They were bitter at the world and everything in it.

My father returned to casting. “It’s not too hard. We’ve washed our hands of pack life. She misses her friends, of course, but we gave the pack our daughter, our son, and our lives. We don’t have more to give. You’ll understand that feeling one day.”

The man had never been the same after my sister’s death. He’d groomed her from birth for the job and simply taught me how to do her dirty work. When she died, he was done. He’d held on for a few years, but he’d become a ghost of the man he’d once been. In the end, he dumped it all in my hands and faded away.

His fishing line flicked in the air. “I’d tell you to come up more, but you and I know that’s not going to happen.”

I leaned back against the tree. “Things are busy right now.”

“They always are. And you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t need something. What is it?”

I watched his motions alertly. I knew he was measuring me, even with his back turned, just as I was measuring him.

“We had a run last night,” I said.

He laughed at that. It was just a short exhalation of air, but from him, it was a surprise. “I admit, I do miss the lake run. But there are other lone wolves out here. We run with them when the moon is right.”

“After the run, the loremaster told the story of the Dark Wolf God.”

If I hadn’t been watching like a hawk, I would have missed the subtle tensing of the muscles in his neck. His casting didn’t lose even a scrap of fluidity, but I could tell that had surprised him. “Not a story I wish to remember.”

Even though he was no longer alpha, my father tended to keep his cards close to his vest. Even with me. I focused on every movement, every scent, every twitch. “What can you tell me about Victor Dragan?”

I hadn’t needed to be so attuned.

He stopped short, and the fly dropped to the water. I held my breath as he considered his words. “Dragan was a monster. A twin-soul.”

“That I know. Half sorcerer, half wolf.”

He turned suddenly, his eyes blazing gold. “No. All sorcerer, all wolf—just trapped in one body. Two souls vying for control, ripping his mind apart. It drove him mad…drove him to do unspeakable things.”

The hatred and anger in his voice could have boiled the river dry. I’d rarely seen my father react to anything with such ferocity. He was typically measured. Tactical.

My mouth turned to sand as memories of Savannah arguing with her wolf flooded into my mind. I’d told her not to worry, that her wolf was just a different aspect of her personality…but what if it wasn’t? What it she was like Dragan, a twin-soul, two spirits trapped in the same body?

Would she go mad? She talked about a darkness in her…

I shivered and realized my father was studying me intently, so I cleared my throat. “What did Dragan do?”

“Dark magic. Rituals. Sacrifices. He pursued forbidden knowledge and turned his own abilities to perverse spells. He seduced good wolves with power and the promise of vengeance on a world that despised and feared us.”

All things Dragan had done while possessing Kahanov. All things we suspected he was trying to do again with the bikers.

I shifted my stance as curiosity pulled me in. “Why?”

“A lust for power. To take revenge on us. To summon the Dark Wolf God. But that’s in the past.”

Alastair began fishing again, but instead of deftly teasing the top of the water with his fly, he lashed out as if whipping a man in a pillory.

“The loremaster mentioned the prophecy, but people only ever allude to it,” I said. “What is it, exactly?”

He gave me a suspicious look. “That a twin-soul would bring the Dark God back. That they would take the souls of our pack.”

My heartbeat accelerated. There would be no hiding it from my father. “I need to know the exact words.”

He studied my face a long time in silence. His scent had gone from mild irritation to a low, simmering dread tinged with echoes of old hatred.

He closed his eyes, and after a moment, he spoke. “I will tell you what the old moon-gazer told me: the rabbit is in the house of the wolf, and we have entered an age of darkness. A twin-soul will come to power. They will be the harbinger of destruction. In the night, when the moon has turned her back, they will make a sacrifice before the Dark God, and in seven days, he will walk the earth once more, spreading madness among the living. The twin-soul will steal the wolves from every werewolf who resists them and will leave your people weak before the Dark God.”

Darkness swelled in my chest. This was what was coming, what Dragan was trying to achieve. “That’s why you hunted him down? Because he was prophesied to do a ritual to bring back the Dark Wolf God?”

My father bared his fangs, though not at me. “Dragan murdered and stole and corrupted. If we hadn’t done something, he would have brought back the Dark God. He would have stolen our souls somehow. That’s why I even stooped to working with those filthy LaSalles.”

Fuck. Hadn’t Dragan wanted to take Savy’s wolf?

Suspicion filled my father’s eyes, which focused on me like lasers. “Why are you asking so many questions about a dead man?”

I didn’t flinch. “I believe he’s returned.”

“Impossible. I saw Laurel LaSalle disintegrate him with my own eyes. His body turned to dust.” My father’s words were confident and filled with anger, but his scent—although masterfully controlled—betrayed his shock.

I focused all my senses on reading him. My father knew something more. “Dragan’s soul survived. He was possessing a blood-sorcerer, Ulan Kahanov.”

My father’s rod dipped until it touched the surface of the slowly flowing water, creating a thin wake like a knife slicing into skin. “The sorcerer that Billy helped?”

I nodded.

His face contorted with rage, and his muscles tensed. Fur erupted along the backs of his hands, and his claws dug into the cork grip of the rod. When he spoke, his voice cut the air like a scream, but it was no louder than a whisper. “The fucking fool.”

My father and mother hadn’t taken Billy’s death well, and I knew they blamed me. He’d been their son-in-law and their last link to my sister, just as he had been to me.

I hadn’t told them everything he’d done. I owed them that. “I don’t think Billy knew who Kahanov truly was, only that he promised revenge on the LaSalles.”

My father’s fingers twitched, and pain and bitterness filled his words. “We all want that, but Billy was a fool just the same.”

“We hunted down the sorcerer and killed him. But we think Dragan is still out there, that he’s possessed another.”

My father locked me with an iron glare. “Then you and the pack must do anything you can to stop him. Make deals with warlocks or devils or vampires, but you must destroy him. If the Dark God returns, he’ll revert the earth to its natural state. Cities will crumble before him. Technology will fail, and humankind will be hunted until there’s nothing left but animals to walk among the ruins.”

His words stirred the memories of the loremaster’s story. I saw the darkness rising and the ruins of Magic Side hidden in the mist. There were no machines or noises or people—just overgrown stone and pavement, and birds flitting warily from tree to tree.

“Can you tell me anything more about how to defeat him?” I asked.

“If I knew that, I’d have done it myself.” He turned back to his fishing. I knew it was a dismissal, and I could tell his heart was no longer in it. “But Jaxson…”

“Yes?”

“Don’t stop until you’ve destroyed Dragan’s soul.”

I nodded, though he couldn’t see it. I turned to go but paused and warily placed my hand on the trunk of a pine. I kept my voice even, using every ounce of power and control I possessed. “And if I ever discover another twin-soul, what should I do?”

“Kill them. No matter who it is, no matter the cost, do it without hesitation. It’s what I would do. It’s what your sister would have done. If the Dark God returns, we’re all as good as dead.”

I left before he could smell the dread rising in my chest.

Was this what Laurel feared? Why she’d bound Savannah’s wolf?

My guts knotted as I climbed the hill. I had no idea whether Savannah was a twin-soul, but that didn’t matter. If anyone even suspected…

I had to protect her.

That meant no one could ever know the truth. Not Sam, not Regina…

Not even Savy herself.